Left, right and Greens against it
Weber: EU migration package is “on a knife edge”
April 7, 2024, 11:35 a.m
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The EU wants to launch a new asylum and migration package. Conservatives hope to be able to limit the flow of refugees. For the Greens, however, the reform “leads to suffering and more secondary migration to Germany.” They want to vote against it. And they’re not the only ones.
The head of the Christian Democratic EPP group in the EU Parliament, Manfred Weber, has warned of a possible failure of the asylum and migration package in next week’s vote. The vote was “on a knife edge,” Weber told the “Bild” newspaper. According to information from the newspaper, in addition to the left- and right-wing populists, the European Greens also want to vote against the package on eight out of ten points. Negotiators from the European Parliament had negotiated the current text with representatives of the member states – as a rule, acceptance is then considered likely. The parliamentary debate and vote are scheduled for Tuesday.
“Once again the Greens are showing their double face: approval in Berlin, boycott in Europe,” said CSU politician Weber. “You can’t do responsible politics like that.” The EU MP and Green Party migration expert Erik Marquardt, however, told “Bild am Sonntag”: “This reform will neither limit migration, nor improve distribution and certainly not simplify the procedures. On the contrary.”
The reform would allow states with an EU external border to treat refugees even worse, the Green politician warned, according to the paper. “In the past, this has not led to limiting migration, but rather to suffering and more secondary migration to Germany,” said Marquardt. “For years now, every time the law has been tightened, we’ve noticed that we’ve created even more bureaucracy and problems than before. We’re not going along with that.”
The EPP parliamentary group leader, however, said that with the legislative package there was a good chance that the number of refugees would be reduced. “The state has to decide who gets in, and not the smuggling gangs.” Fast-track procedures at the external borders are the right way to combat illegal migration.
The asylum reform provides for uniform procedures at Europe’s external borders. The plan is to deal much harsher with people from countries that are considered relatively safe. They should be able to be accommodated in prison-like conditions for up to twelve weeks until a decision on their asylum application is made. In the future, people who come from a country with a recognition rate of less than 20 percent, as well as people who are considered a threat to public safety, would have to go through such a border procedure. According to the plans, the distribution of those seeking protection among the EU states will also be reorganized using a “solidarity mechanism”: If the countries do not want to accept refugees, they must provide support, for example in the form of monetary payments.